The modes of promoting are many. You have the option to advertise on online marketplaces and even social media. Out of all the social mediums available, Facebook is the most popular social platform for advertising. This social medium has about 142 million users in India alone. And, it receives about 25.40 billion visits from worldwide users. This makes it a good option to boost your product visibility.
To help you with this, Facebook offers a diverse audience that you can advertise your products to. It is like a crowded city that offers you billboards to publicize your wares to the people passing by. This can increase traffic to your listings and boost the sales of your products on the online retail market.
Indian Online Seller (IOS) spoke with online sellers who use Facebook ads to promote their business and we learned it can help boost sale by 10-30%.
Online seller Dhruv claims that he ran Facebook ads for his products on ExclusiveLane.com, Amazon, Flipkart and other major marketplaces for a very short while but did see satisfying results.
“We used paid promotion like newsfeed ad. The sales increased by around 10% as we ran it for a very short time,” he informs us.
Online womenntrepreneur, Jayanti Gupta on the other hand is a continuous user of this Facebook feature and runs ads for Parinita.co.in on a regular basis.
She says, “We have been using Facebook ads for around 3 year and have witnessed a 30% increase in sales.”
With figures like these, you certainly must be wondering how you can reap the same advantages.
To help you with this we have put together a short and simple guide with tips from users on ‘how to advertise your products on Facebook’ and receive substantial results.
To start off, Facebook has three main sections for ad placements. They include –
In addition to these, you also have the option of posting your product on Instagram (another social medium) via Facebook.
A Facebook ad will allow you to add the following components to it:
At the same time, it also provides you with different objectives for your campaign like, brand awareness, clicks to website, store visits, web conversions etc., each of these are designed to help you reach your pre-planned business goals.
For awareness, Facebook will display your ads only to those audiences interested in your product. Some objectives can help you make new audiences consider your products and other objectives can encourage those interested in your kind of products to make purchases.
Based on the objectives you choose you will have the following options:
This is a popular pick. It allows you to post an image, text and a description to your link. According to Facebook guidelines, the recommended image size is 1,200×628 pixels this will ensure the image is not cropped and all of its content is visible in spite of the placement. It also ensures that the image is high resolution no matter which section it is placed in.
When it comes to text, follow the below guidelines, it will avoid your information from being clipped on a smaller display screen –
Text: 90 characters
Headline: 25 characters
Link description: 30 characters
Facebook allows you to use media like videos too while advertising. The maximum length of a video can be 120 minutes and 4GBs in size. Although you have the option to post a long video, it’s best to keep things short and to the point. Make sure your ads are only a few seconds long and concentrate on the product you are trying to sell. Check more technical guidelines here.
This is also called multi-product ad. This option lets you use multiple images or videos. These can be of different products from your product line. Each product can be named in the headline section and a call to action can be added in the link description section.
The character length here is –
Text: 90 characters
Headline: 40 characters
Link description: 20 characters
The images size should be 600×600 pixels. And the number of images added to the carousel should be within 3-5. You can add more, however, it’s best to keep the ad short, with limited visuals.
What canvas helps you do is create a unique story for your brand through multiple visual components. You can add a header, photos, descriptive text, a call to-action button, a carousel, videos and product set (this is your product catalogue).
For the carousel you can add only 10 images. Under product set, you can show about 40 products at a time. It is best if you are launching a new brand, expanding your brand or taking your brand in a new direction.
*Note – this option is only displayed on mobile devices
For a better understanding of what Facebook canvas ads look like have a look at this video example.
If you maintain your own online retail store, you can use this option. Here instead of leading the consumer to your website or product page, he will be taken to a time bound discount code or bar code. The best time to use this option is when you want your products to move quickly, like at the end of the season or when you want your sales targets to be met quickly. This ad comes with a call to action button and directs traffic towards your offer.
These are kind of like the ads that follow you from platform to platform. Have you ever checked out a product online than noticed it in the ad section on Facebook? This is retargeting. For this you must upload a list of shopper email ids onto Facebook’s power editor to create a custom audience that you plan on retargeting.
This feature lets you advertise an already published post on your Facebook page or profile. You do not need to go through Facebook Ad Manager to boost a post. Plus, you can include as much text as you’d like and multiple images too. Only issues are you cannot edit the images or links of published posts.
It’s easy to reach mobile users
Online seller Jayanti Gupta claims, “If you sell online, either on your own e-store or on online marketplaces, you will need to reach out to your target audience online. Facebook is among the leading social networks where businesses engage with their customers. Here’s a brief guide to the basics of Facebook advertising.”
It’s going be a bit difficult in the start to get the hang of these different ads. You will also need to test them out before deciding which ones work best for your goods. To help you out Gupta has put together the following pointers:
“1. Set-up: Create a Facebook business page with all the relevant details. Set up an ads account with payment information.
Study the pages of similar businesses to understand the demographics and behaviour of the audience you want to connect with. This will be the key to targeting them effectively through ads.
2. Building ads: Understand the various ad types and choose the one that meets your objective. Choose your audience based on the various demographic and behavioural characteristics that you can select from.
Set your budget (start small, test ad performance and increase accordingly). Choose from the various formats available (e.g. photo, carousel, video, slideshow, etc.) and create the ad images in the recommended sizes.
Test multiple images, headlines and descriptions and assess what works best. Always stay updated with notifications on your ads. Use Adverts Manager to measure and manage the performance of your ads.
3. Develop an effective content strategy: This is the most challenging aspect of social media marketing. If your ads always try to sell, your audience will lose interest. Develop varied, creative content to educate, entertain, inspire and delight your fans. Focus on quality over quantity, but post consistently.
4. Be realistic: Don’t put all your advertising money on Facebook ads and don’t expect all the money you spend here to convert into sales immediately. This is a platform where you can increase awareness about your brand, connect with your fans, resolve their queries and leverage their networks to increase your fan base. Keep abreast of your competitors, see what’s working for them and what’s not, and refine your strategy accordingly.”
With just about everyone on Facebook, you cannot afford to ignore this avenue for advertising. It opens the doors to brand awareness and increased sales. And, now that you’ve been equipped with the basics you are all set to start your Facebook ad campaign.
In case you’ve already tried out this form of advertising, narrate your experience to us through the comments section below.
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